In two-way stereo audio transmission that is used in teleconferencing systems and so forth, the problem of indefinite coefficient of echo cancellers has conventionally been pointed out and, for solving it, there have been proposed various techniques (see Journal of The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, vol. 81, No. 3, pp. 266-274, March 1998). As one of the techniques for solving the problem of indefinite coefficient, there is a method of reducing the interchannel correlation. As concrete techniques therefor, there have conventionally been proposed the addition of random noise, the correlation removal by filters, the interchannel frequency shift, the use of an interleave comb filter, the nonlinear processing (Laid-Open Patent Publication No. H10-190848) and so forth.
According to the foregoing conventional techniques, since original stereo signals are subjected to processing and then reproduced, there has been a problem that deterioration more or less occurs in reproduced signals. Further, when the processing is complicated, a delay occurs in the reproduced signals, so that there has been a problem of difficulty in conversation in the teleconference and so forth. Further, when the processing is complicated and the processing capability of a processing circuit is low, there have been those instances where it is difficult to update a coefficient of an echo canceller in real time while carrying out the echo cancel processing.
This invention provides an echo cancellation technique for multi-channel audio signals and a transfer function calculation technique that have solved the foregoing problems in the conventional techniques.